


Substitute

by orbythesea



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-08
Updated: 2007-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:54:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orbythesea/pseuds/orbythesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry never saw himself falling for a woman who was incapable of loving him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Substitute

>   
> _But I'm a substitute for another guy  
>  I look pretty tall but my heels are high  
> The simple things you see are all complicated  
> I look pretty young, but I'm just back-dated.  
> _  
> -The Who, "Substitute"   
> 

"Calm down old girl, tell me where you are--!"

"That's what I mean, Harry, I don't _know_ where I am, it's Earth, twentieth century-- it is still the twentieth century, isn't it? What year is it?"

He tells her it's 1978, almost a year since he saw her last.

"Oh, sod all," she says after a brief pause and he knows she was doing a quick bit of math. "I'm two years early, I think. I mean, I'm two years older than 1978, all the time we spent out there in space, he should have dropped me back in 1980, then my body would be the same age as my birthdate."

Harry doesn't dare argue with her. "You know this reverse call is costing me an arm and a leg, old girl--"

"Wait, Harry, hold on," she says, and he can't help but think she hasn't listened to a word he's said.

Her voice is muffled in the background, as though she's placed a hand over the telephone, and after a moment she speaks again. "I'm in Aberdeen," she says, sounding none too pleased with this.

"You'd better get a room, Sarah, it'll take me a while to get there."

"With what _money_?" she demands.

She stays on the line as she fumbles through the phonebook, finally giving him the name of a nearby hotel and when he hangs up, he calls and arranges the funds for her stay to be wired there.

*

She leaves a note with the innkeeper, in case the Doctor winds up in Aberdeen again and slumps into the seat of his car.

"He'll be back, you know," she says after the first few miles. "He's coming back for me. He had to go to Gallifrey and humans aren't allowed, but he'll be back."

Harry nods. Of course he will.

"I mean it!" she laughs. "Can't you drive faster, he's a time traveller, you know, he might be there already!"

Harry presses his foot down and the car lurches forward.

They're almost to UNIT HQ before he tells her "Look, Sarah, about your flat--"

"You did water my plants, didn't you? Harry, you promised--"

"The thing is old girl, I didn't know when you'd be back, and--"

"I don't have the flat, do I?"

He shakes his head, tells her he's sorry. He is, after all. He'd tried, he really had, but the bills kept piling up and there was no sign of her. "Most of your things are in storage at UNIT right now," he offers. "I've got some of your clothes at my apartment, I thought-- I thought when you came back, you might want something fresh to change into."

"It's just as well he blew it then, isn't it?" She asks, trying so hard to put on a brave face. "This is just grand, he dumped me in Aberdeen, I had to phone you to get back home and now I don't even have a home to go to!"

*

He changes the sheets for her and settles in on the couch. He's called the Brigadier and secured employment for her-- paid, no less-- until her stories start selling again. Her editors have been none to pleased with her these past years, and he knows she'll have a time of it, trying to get started all over again.

Media relations specialist, that's what her title will be. It's a rather meaningless title, given UNIT's avoidance of the media, but she needs something, he thinks. This will give her time to get her bearings back. She laughs off his efforts, explaining that the Doctor will be back soon, there's no need for him to go to all this trouble.

Still, they drive in together every morning. She sets up a typewriter for herself in the lab, waiting for the TARDIS to reappear. She spends her time writing and having her pieces rejected. It would seem that no one wants to publish what she has to say, and no newspaper or magazine will hire her after the scathing non-reference from Clorinda.

A week goes by like this, then two, and after a month of nights spent on the couch, Harry wakes up to the sound of her crying in his bedroom.

"Go away, Harry," she says, turning her back to him. "I'm in my nightshirt for God's sake."

He doesn't listen, he never has, really. He sits on the edge of the bed and wraps his arms around her. "Cheer up, old girl, it can't be as bad as all--" He stops, afraid for a moment that she might slap him.

She doesn't slap him, though. She pulls away, cocoons herself in the quilt his grandmother made and refuses to look at him. He's just about to leave her when she speaks, voice muffled by the pillow she's buried her face into.

"He's forgotten me, Harry. He really has."

"No, he hasn't forgotten you, Sarah, if he said he was coming back--"

"Oh, what would you know, anyway?" she asks, facing him now and angry. "He's forgotten all about me and no one understands, I can't talk to anyone about--"

He pulls her to him again, rocking her like the child she so often appears to be. "You can talk to me, Sarah," he whispers into her hair, and he doesn't think she's heard him until she speaks again.

"What do I do now? I've seen the furthest reaches of the galaxy, more horrors than anyone can possibly comprehend but the beauty-- Harry, I've seen such beautiful things and now-- Now I have nothing to show for it but a suitcase full of souvenirs that I can't show to anyone. He just... dumped me, Harry. I've never been dumped before."

He chuckles, pulling her closer to him and she cries into his shirt, leaving wet blotches in the cotton. Eventually, she sleeps, head buried in his chest. He moves to go, but she stirs. "Don't you leave me too," she commands, so he pulls a bit of the quilt for himself and when he wakes up, she's still in his arms.

"Wake up, Sarah," he whispers, and she whines in protest, rolling away from him and pulling a pillow over her head.

He makes coffee and brings her a cup, and if his voice didn't rouse her, the smell does.

"I always preferred tea, you know," she informs him, sipping carefully so as not to spill on the sheets. "Lavinia always said that if you want to know the true nature of a person, look at what they take in their tea." She frowns. "She never did explain what she meant by that, I should call her up right now and ask."

"Sarah, it's seven o'clock in the morning," he protests, and she laughs. For a moment, he thinks she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. He's never really thought of Sarah as a woman before. Next to the Doctor, she's always seemed impossibly young, and she can be so childlike in her endless curiosity and enthusiasm. Now though, with no one to compare her to, he can see her for who she's always been and he feels as though he's been utterly daft not to notice before.

She doesn't go into work, and at lunchtime he feels so very lonely, with no one to check in on. He finds her that evening in his dining room, typing furiously. "Just let me finish this paragraph--" she says, preempting any greeting he might offer.

He hangs his coat in the closet and is fixing himself a drink when the click-clack of the typewriter falls silent. "Can I talk now?" he asks, ducking his head out of the kitchen with a bit of a smile.

"I got a call," she tells him. "Suggestion to adapt the Dalek story into a piece of _fiction_." There's disdain on her face, but he can see from the stack of pages next to her that however she might feel about a fictionalized version of events, she's doing it all the same.

"That's wonderful!" he exclaims, perching on the edge of the table to watch her stretch.

"I'm a journalist," she complains. "I can't start writing fiction today and expect to be taken seriously tomorrow. Who will believe me? All a journalist has in the end is her credibility, and mine's shot right now the window."

"Sarah--" he starts to interrupt, but she's on a roll.

"And do you know who's to blame for /that/, Harry? I'll tell you who's to blame, it's the bloody Doctor, snatching me up, taking me all over the universe only to dump me with no shred of professional reputation left-- I'd be lucky to land a job writing the obits, do you know that? I wish I'd never met him!"

"Sarah--" he tries again, but she shakes her head, reaching for his glass and taking a swallow.

"God, Harry, what in the world are you drinking? I don't really mean that, of course, not really. It's just so _different_ , stuck here on Earth, living life so _linearly_ \-- and I loved him, Harry, I really loved him. I loved him more than I've ever loved anyone and I never told him. What if he's dead? What if he died and I never told him? He was my best friend, and he's gone and I'm sitting here writing a bloody novel!"

Harry plucks his glass back from her hand before it sloshes as she speaks and sets it down on the table. "Calm down, old girl, you'll get through this. If you don't want to write the novel, don't write the novel. We'll take care of you, Sarah--"

"Oh, no you won't!" She snaps, and he realizes too late that it was the wrong thing to say. "You and the Brig, you're like that, you know. Must take care of Sarah. I can bloody well take care of myself, thank you very much. I'll have you know that when I was out there in space, I saved the Doctor as many times as he saved me, and now that I'm stuck here, I certainly don't need to be taken care of. What's going to hurt me here, Harry? Do you honestly believe that after everything I've seen and done that I need to be _sheltered_?"

"No," he interrupts. "You're right, old girl, you don't need sheltering, you need--"

"Don't you dare tell me what I need, Harry Sullivan, and _don't_ call me 'old girl'--"

He ignores her and continues. "You need to know that there are people here who are _glad_ to have you home, you need to know that there are people here on Earth who love you to bits. There are people here who would move the Earth just to make you smile. Don't ask me who, Sarah, you're smarter than that. So come on, give us a smile. Let me--"

She looks away, crosses her arms against her chest. She's pouting, Harry realizes.

"Right then, suit yourself." He retrieves his glass and leaves the room, settling down on the couch with his scotch and a rapidly breaking heart and turns on the television.

"Oh, come on Harry, don't do this--" it's a full ten minutes before she appears with a cup of tea and a bit of a smile.

It's his turn to avoid eye contact, staring straight ahead at the telly, pretending not to hear her.

She kneels before him, resting her chin on his knee.

They stay like this for an hour or two, sitting and watching television in silence. Finally, she gets up, stretches and starts for his bedroom. Halfway there, she turns at him, expression positively wicked. "You coming?"

*

Theirs is nothing even remotely resembling a normal relationship, but how exactly can two former-time-travellers working for a secret government agency _have_ a normal relationship anyway? Sarah's not the type of woman Harry ever saw himself falling for.

She rarely cooks and she's developed a habit of disappearing, only occasionally leaving a note ( _I've got a lead in Paris,_ the last one read. _Back soon_ ). Mostly, he never saw himself falling for a woman who was incapable of loving him back.

That's not entirely true, he knows. Sarah does love him, in her way. It's more of a grudging affection than anything resembling what he feels for her, and sometimes he thinks she's just biding her time until the Doctor comes back or something better comes along. He doesn't like to feel used, and Sarah Jane has mastered the art of using people.

He finds himself trying to guess when it is she'll decide to leave him. After a month, he decided it would be after the first story she sold since being home. A week later the morning's Guardian was spread open to the second page of the science section by the time he made it to the dining room table, her name circled in black ink under a headline. When she came home that night, carrying boxes of Chinese takeout, he set the next milestone to prepare himself for.

She found a staff position, and still she stayed. She came back to him after two weeks in Indonesia, then again after a week in America with Lavinia. After nine months, he marches up to the jewelry counter at Harrod's and buys a ring: a single diamond set in white gold.

He comes home to one of her little notes ( _Argentina. Don't forget to water the plants this time_ ), and with a sad sigh he tucks the ring into the back of his underwear drawer.

In the end, the ring proves to be his undoing.

She comes home from Argentina ten days later, gloriously tan with a new collection of hand-painted pottery, talking a mile a minute about locro which, she declares, is her new favorite food. Two days later, over dinner at Il Tartufo, he sets the ring in its pristine little black box on the table between them.

"Harry, if that's what I think it is, take it back to wherever you got it and never mention it again," she says. "Are you sure you don't want to try the risotto, it's simply marvelous."

"Sarah," he begins, but at the look on her face, his words die at his lips. "Right, no, thank you," he says, tucking the ring back into his jacket pocket.

"I sold the Dalek book," she says after a few minutes of awkward silence. "It'll be published under a pen name, of course, but that's done now."

"Good," he says, trying so hard to feel anything. "Sarah--"

"Don't say it, Harry, don't even think it," she says, narrowing her eyes. "That's never been what this is about, don't try to make it something it's not."

He shakes his head. "Right, no, I was just going to say I didn't even know you were still working on it."

*

Three days later, she's the one to bring it up again. "Why did you have to go and change everything?" she asks, facing him as her head rests on the pillow.

"I love you," he says, voice soft. "I want--"

She shakes her head. "We've never wanted the same things, Harry, never."

He nods, resigned. "I'm tired of being your substitute," he admits, and she recoils as if he'd slapped her.

Two days later he comes home to find the last note she'll ever leave him. An address, an apology, and a signature.

( _From Sarah, With Love._ )


End file.
